Like anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism is a hatred of people who have more, who are more successful, and who the anti-Semites secretly fear are better than them.

It is widely assumed . . . that anti-Semitism is a form of racism or ethnic xenophobia. . .

But if anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics.
– Paul Johnson, “The Anti-Semitic Disease,” Commentary, June 2005

It was upon reading these words that I thought Paul Johnson was onto something. In the end, he came very close, but missed the target.

Mr. Johnson’s theme was that anti-Semitism is “an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.”

The author then proceeds, over the course of several pages, to document how increases in anti-Semitism actually hurt, in terms of political power and economic prosperity, the countries and cultures which employed anti-Semitism to the extent that they drove out the Jews. He cites the late 15th century expulsion of the Jews from Spain, “depriv(ing) Spain (and its colonies) of a class already notable for its astute handling of finance,” and states that the resettlement of Jews in the Netherlands “led to the accelerated development of the mercantile and financial sectors and the establishment for a time of Dutch global economic supremacy.”

He continues through several other examples, and holds that Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitism hurt the Nazi dictator, not only electorally as the Nazis were gaining power (something certainly difficult to prove), but as it became so fiercely dominant in his mind led to irrational wartime decisions.

Mr. Johnson then asserts that anti-Semitism has similarly hurt the Arabs.

Just as Hitler ended his life a suicide, having failed in his mission of destroying the Jewish people, so 100 million or more Arabs, marching under the banner of anti-Semitism, have totally failed, despite four full-scale wars, and waves of terrorism and intifadas without number, to extinguish tiny Israel.

Near the end, Mr. Johnson finds an intellectual kinship between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, finding anti-Americanism “against reason,” and just plain counterproductive.

Germany is now becoming demoralized again, for a variety of reasons: appallingly high unemployment; falling standards of living relative to the U.S., Britain and other advanced nations; declining population figures, giving rise to anxiety about the future of the workforce and the security of the pension system; and the inability of the country’s leaders to address any of these problems.

In the post-World War II period, ironically, Germany prospered mightily by looking to the U.S. for entrepreneurial inspiration as well as political and military leadership. For the past quarter-century, it has fallen increasingly under the spell of France and the French fantasy of a European superstate that will rival America. Precisely during this period of French hegemony, Germany has entered upon an accelerating economic decline, already relative and soon to be absolute.

One can quibble, I suppose, with Mr. Johnson’s claims about the German economy. Germany certainly suffers from chronically high unemployment, and its rate of growth is, and has been, much lower than in the United States.

But, having written the preamble for the real conclusion, Mr. Johnson stops short. Perhaps it was for reasons of political correctness, or perhaps he simply never took it to the logical conclusion.

When Mr. Johnson noted in the beginning that anti-Semitism was awfully peculiar to be a variety of racism, he was on the right track. When he noted that anti-Americanism is just as irrational and counterproductive a concept as anti-Semitism, he isolated where the differences between anti-Semitism (and anti-Americanism) and racism lie.

Racism is, at bottom, a belief that the people or group at whom the racism is directed are somehow not as good as the people holding the racist views. Black slavery by whites was frequently justified because blacks simply weren’t equal to whites; post-emancipation racism in the United States pretty much held to that same view.

Racism, in areas in which the group discriminated against is part of the population, usually involved groups that are less successful, poorer, than the dominant, racist group. Anti-Semitism has much more frequently involved discrimination against people who were more successful, were better off, than the anti-Semites. Like anti-Americanism, it is a hatred of people who have more, who are more successful, a hatred of people whom the anti-Semites secretly fear are better than them.

You see it all the time. The Arabs hate the Israelis, but a huge part of that is because the Israelis have taken a dirt-poor piece of land and made it bloom, have taken a place with little industry and little hope, and turned it into a thriving country, while the Arabs who live next door, many of whose families used to live on the land that is now Israel, remain dirt-poor. Much of the wealth that did flow into the Palestinian economy prior to the intifada came from Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria and Gaza working inside Israel proper.

And they hated that!

Anti-Americanism, of course, has long been fueled by a resentment of the wealth and power of the United States: after a time, it becomes difficult to see Americans as simply the beneficiaries of luck, and a question has to arise, are the Americans somehow better than us?

To me, it’s pretty clear: anti-Semitism, like anti-Americanism, is the result of plain envy, envy of success, envy of culture. Why, those people simply have much more than they deserve, and it’s just not fair!

Dana R. Pico is a conservative writer living in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. His articles can also be found on Common Sense Political Thought.